EverQuest Next was just unveiled by Sony Online Entertainment at long last, with a lot of interesting footage and artwork, not to mention some really cool development concepts, that you can find just below in a handy list of bullet points.

  • The world is made out of small Voxels so pretty much everything can be destroyed and many elements can be constructed.
  • The AI, named "Emergent AI" will be just created and then unleashed into the world. It will react to the players, find a place to live and do damage, and so forth.
  • The world has many tiers of depth, and periodical earthquakes and other landscape changing events will recreate areas procedurally.
  • The concept of permanent change exist in the form of Rallying Calls. They're basically immense "public quests" that can last two to three months and create whole storylines, like a city that gets founded from scratch, expanded, sieged by monsters and so forth. They'll be different from each servers and the triggers to unlock next stages will be unknown to players.
  • Players will be able to travel the world in a very dynamic way, vaulting over obstacles and floating thanks to magic items.
  • There will be a very large amount of equipment to wear, leaving players total freedom on how to look. If one wants full armor, he can wear that, if he or she prefers a metal bikini, so be it.
  • Players will be able to unlock new classes, switch between them dynamically based on defining weapons, and even mix and match their abilities.

Later this year Sony Online Entertainment will also release EverQuest Next Landmark, that will feature a series of procedurally generated worlds where players will be able to claim their land and build upon it pretty much like on Minecraft, but with much more advanced building tools based on Voxels, basically the same building tools used to create EverQuest Next. Thanks to the Player Studio feature they'll also be able to sell and purchase creations with real money and make a profit out of their creativity.

The best creations, most fitting with the world and the specifications offered by the developer, will actually end up in Norrath when Everquest Next launches.

Below you can see seven juicy videos from the unveiling of the game, and a gallery with 125 screencaps from the livestream, showing all the artwork displayed and quite a bit of stills from the gameplay itself.

//www.youtube.com/embed/Dh_0neHhR0k

//www.youtube.com/embed/BF5EzGW2L9Q

//www.youtube.com/embed/p2j8YaxJW8g

//www.youtube.com/embed/cdgPuEl5Nuk

//www.youtube.com/embed/GpaaUAEoq6E

//www.youtube.com/embed/wyKpQH5TxVE

//www.youtube.com/embed/pi_m34IKbcA